Why F1 the Movie should win the best picture Oscar

It may not be in pole position, but Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski’s sleek, technically inventive ode to motor racing definitely qualifies for the Academy podium Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent , which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win. That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” ...

William Tell review – limbs fly as Claes Bang’s medieval hero rallies a Swiss army

A classy cast plays it straight in this enjoyably daft action epic about the crossbow sharpshooter forced to shoot an apple from his son’s head

Nick Hamm lets rip with some gonzo Game of Thrones craziness in his retelling of the William Tell myth with a blue-chip cast. Limbs get chopped off in a style I haven’t seen since the days of Monty Python’s Black Knight. It’s the story of the 14th-century Swiss folk hero and crossbow artist, a peaceful farmer and huntsman who has endured continual tyranny and humiliation at the hands of his Austrian Habsburg masters, and finally rises up against them on a coward-of-the-county basis; the flashpoint being made to shoot an apple from his son’s head for the sneering amusement of the Habsburg nobleman Gessler.

It’s adapted by Hamm from the 1804 play by Schiller (not many action movies can boast that), but gives Tell a Muslim wife and adopted son that Schiller didn’t imagine; a flashback reveals this to be the result of Tell’s experiences in the Crusades, a time of bigoted cruelty. Hamm inserts into his movie some outrageous and enjoyable cod-Shakespearean dialogue.

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